The Heroes And Villains of SimCity

Feb 12, 2013

Game Designer Shawn Stone

Oh, hi there, SimCity fan, let me introduce myself. My name is Shawn Stone. I’m a game designer working at Maxis, and my role is to write and edit all of the text in the game as well as design our tutorials and missions. It’s been a great honor and a ton of fun to work on the revival of my absolute favorite game series of all time.

One aspect of the game that I’m lucky enough to tell you about today is the Heroes & Villains set, which is bonus content exclusively found in the Limited Edition and Digital Deluxe versions of SimCity. As a devout comic book geek, when I think of cities, the first thing that leaps heroically to mind are all the familiar cities associated with each hero. It would be a huge disappointment to me if we didn’t provide a way to get that same kind of experience in your own cities in SimCity. The Heroes & Villains set gives your city aid with the heroic MaxisMan or embrace your inner heartless villain and wreak havoc with Dr. Vu. Even more exciting is to do both at the same time and enjoy the tumultuous tussle of these titans of technology in the mighty Maxis manner!

MaxisMan’s base of operations is Maxis Manor. This reinforced compound is where MaxisMan lives, eats, and sleeps justice. Once you plop Maxis Manor in your fair city, you can send MaxisMan out to patrol for injured Sims. Unlike ambulances that will take injured Sims to the hospital, MaxisMan uses his high-tech defibrillray to instantly heal injured Sims. As you send MaxisMan on patrol, he’ll accumulate Renown Points. Once you have enough points, you can add the Turbo Machine Garage to your city’s Maxis Manor. This will upgrade his compact Cautious Machine to the faster Turbo Machine. With the Turbo Machine, MaxisMan can earn Renown Points while on patrol for criminals. Earn enough points and you can add the Reticulator Landing Pad to Maxis Manor. The Reticulator is an awesome flying platform that MaxisMan uses to leap into action, extinguishing fires from the sky or battling Dr. Vu's dreaded contraption, the vuBot.

If your mayoral style is decidedly less justice oriented and more chaos, then you'll want Vu Tower in your city. This is the headquarters of Dr. Vu's massive vuTek empire. Unaware of his sinister criminal activities, shoppers flock to Vu Tower to buy all the latest vuTek gadgets and gizmos. With Vu Tower open, nearby industry will benefit from a surge in tech level advancement. Every day though, Dr. Vu creates new henchmen from your otherwise pleasant residents. These henchmen fan out into your city, committing a wide variety of crimes, returning to Vu Tower with loot. To collect loot faster, you can unleash a crime wave of henchmen all at once, if you think your police or MaxisMan can handle it. As Dr. Vu accumulates loot, you can add the VuMobile Garage, which soups up Dr. Vu's car and the Vu Laboratory. Vu Laboratory is where Dr. Vu builds his destructive VuBot. Unleash this high-tech monstrosity on your city to keep MaxisMan busy or just for the sheer explosive fun.

The Heroes & Villains set comes with a set of missions for MaxisMan and another for Dr. Vu. Each series of missions leads you through the process of using all of the buildings and modules. It's your choice if you only want MaxisMan in your city, just Dr. Vu or both. It's exciting to watch their endless struggle. Unleashing waves of henchmen provides excellent fodder for MaxisMan to gain renown, as does the hulking vuBot.

MaxisMan and Dr. Vu will make your city a super-exciting place to play and watch! Vu Tower can help you create a unique city that is filled with both high tech industry and crime. Maxis Manor lets you actively respond to crime, injuries, and fires in your city in an appropriately super fashion. The Heroes & Villains set helps me create the comic book city of my dreams and I can't wait for everyone to play with this new content. In the immortal words of MaxisMan, "Have no regrets, MaxisMan is here!"

According to the Blog..."My name is Shawn Stone. I’m a game designer working at Maxis, and my role is to write and edit all of the text in the game as well as design our tutorials and missions"... scary huh? lol

- I like the humour of this set but I don't know if it is good or bad to have the set ties to the high tech industry... does it mean that players in Industry leaderboard should build a Dr. Vu Tower in order to stay competitive?

- Will the heros and villains blow up things in other player's cities? I don't say it is unfair but it certain alienates those who don't buy the set (I have pre-ordered the limited edition anyway haha)

Because chances are, we're all into comics or super-heroes in some way... Players of Sim City don't exist in vacuums...

Sounds like I'll get my hands full with my pre-order... Maxis-Man will be able to respond to accidents and fires quicker, meaning I won't have to spend thousands on having hordes of ambulances... But Vu allows you to develop the city and "advance humanity" in some way or another...

What's next? Two versions of the Sim City castle, with one being a glistening source of enlightenment (boosting education) and the other a tower of greed (boosting commercial development)?

I kind of wish we had the ability to name the hero and villain whatever we wanted. Are we able to send out the hero or villain into other cities to help/sabotage them? That would be amazing in multi-player mode

I want to preorder simcity, but I don't want to pay for extra DLC that adds little content and had disadvantages. BTW if someone in your region has the expansion and you don't, can they just plop down a landmark and give you the city afterwards.

I want to preorder simcity, but I don't want to pay for extra DLC that adds little content and had disadvantages. BTW if someone in your region has the expansion and you don't, can they just plop down a landmark and give you the city afterwards.

I don't like this expansion thing. I like the feel of realism in games.. And any expansion packs or things such as that that aren't realistic and make the game seem more fake, really doesn't interest me.

Can people with the heroes and villains set play with people without it and how does that work? Can someone with the dlc take over my town, build the buildings, then leave and let me control the town with the dlc content?